Powerbaloney

Q: What’s dumber standing for hours in blocks-long lines today on 80.1-million-to-1 odds you’re not about to throw a buck down the Powerball rathole?

A: Creating this Powerball frenzy and then urging the frenzied to restrain themselves — all the while denying anyone gets hurt, anyway.

Tonight, at one minute before 11, some lucky American — by virtue of picking the correct six numbers — may win $250 million. Maybe not. Tens of millions of Americans, perhaps up to 100 million, definitely will lose. Most will tear up their useless tickets and chuckle at the cheap trip to Fantasyland they bought. Others, those who dumped an entire paycheck, the grocery money, the light bill, on this folly will be genuinely harmed.

That’s why today there are two kinds of officials in the 21 (20 states plus D.C) Powerball jurisdictions: Those who are holding press conferences and staging other media events to remind the public that only a chump bets what he or she can’t afford to lose; and those who are refuting a growing body of evidence that quick-and-dirty state-sponsored gambling — lotteries and scratch-and-win (actually, lose) games — prey especially hard upon the poor.

The “no-chumps” caveat is a fine, common-sense warning. It would be even finer and certainly less hypocritical if the basic concept of Powerball wasn’t to generate hysteria, to foster irrational behavior. After all, Powerball started back in 1992 as a way for smaller states to hold a combined lottery that would compete with the huge payoffs large states could offer. The premise was this: Why bother with piddling jackpots of a million or two that folks can take or leave alone when you can tantalize them with riches that would set even Midas to drooling?

In that, Powerball has succeeded admirably well. Ticket outlets have been jammed for days; residents of non-Powerball states are flying, driving, probably even crawling on their bellies through broken glass to place their bets; otherwise rational workers are rehearsing their tell-off-the-boss speeches. And — this is what the officials are fretting about — the poor are betting way beyond their means.

What else did they expect would happen? Who did they think would pony up $250 million on an 80.1-million-to-1 shot? Bill Gates gone temporarily mad? One of the more gullible Rockefellers? A particularly dim Vanderbilt? If there ever was a scheme designed to take advantage of those struggling through difficult lives in dead-end jobs it is Powerball. At last, a government program that works.